From time to time I boot from ISO files saved in my hard disk. It boots and executes much faster than the live-cd. I would like to save a minimum configuration so that I don't have to configure it each time. I tried "rsync -av" the user's home and then compressing it to bz2, but it didn't work well. When I extracted the bz2 it gave me a few errors, even though I copied the extracted files to replace the user's home but somethings were not configures and the most strange thing was that .gvfs directory appeared without "w" permission for the owner (that is 500). To my surprise not even root can chmod it nor write anything in there. I don't know the reason, maybe I have to do the backup and/or the restoring of files from out the user.

I would like to save mainly:
keyboard layout config
mouse and touchpad configs
wireless settings
browser's bookhemarks
and a few other programs (like terminal) configurations

so that I can easily configure the system the next time I boot from exactly the same ISO file.

What I did was:

rsync -av /home/ubuntu /media/BACKUP (which is a different partition)
and then
tar -jcvf /media/BACKUP/ubuntu-isoconfig.bz2 /media/BACKUP/ubuntu

mikewhatever: I have skiped .gvfs and after restoring the original home directory, I only see the backgrouns, the folders and firefox bookmarks restored, NOT THE KEYBOARD nor the network manager sttings which I have done without root permits.

If there is a problem with booting from an ISO, as indicated by the title, you should add the relevant grub entry to the question. Otherwise, I'd suggest rethinking the title.
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mikewhateverJan 27 '13 at 12:31

People call "persistence" a way to save your changes/settings in live boots, but for what I have seen that intends to load the settings automatically. I don't need that, something manual would be better than reading dozens of tutorials to see how could I adapt that to iso bootings.
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Robert VilaJan 27 '13 at 3:07

Unetbootin= installer of Linux/BSD distributions to a partition or USB drive. UNetbootin allows for the installation of various Linux/BSD distributions to a partition or USB drive, so it's no different from a standard install, only it doesn't need a CD. It can create a dual-boot install, or replace the existing OS entirely. It doesn't seem like an answer to what I am asking.
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Robert VilaJan 27 '13 at 3:10